Colouring headings on the wiki has in my opinion improved it a lot. The homepage still needs work, but cannot be edited.

I've thought a lot about the wiki the last couple of days. It seems to me the wiki has a few major goals:

1. Teach about puppy. What it is. How it works. Package system, different types of install that kind of thing. Newbie help.

2. Puppy versions. What are the current official releases, and what puplets are there.

3. Finding software. Logically ordered. Some attempts have been made to do this on the forum, but this is buond to fail, as forum threads have a habit of going off topic.

4. How to do stuff guides. How to burn CD's, howto connect to a home network. This includes guides on the various Pprograms. Pnethood, Pdict, whatever.

Currently the home page does not provide easy access to all these topics, although most of the stuff mentioned above has many pages available.

A good example: On the wiki homepage, when clicking on Using Puppy, all there is is a guide to getting puppy running. This page should be used as a springboard to all the things mentioned in category 4. Using puppy. Above this should be the "About Puppy" category, where the basics are explained, with suitable links to pages in other categories, for more detailed information.

About the software listing, I've made an example page on the wiki
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/SoftwareIndex
And started filling in the first two categories. It seems like the perfect way to organise this to me.

Also, the CategoryMultimedia page, for example, could have a sentence at the top like this:
For an index of multimedia software, with information, see SoftwareMultimedia. For Multimedia howtos see "whatever page is relevant here". Below is a complete listing of all pages in this category.

I know oui has started implementing a slightly different system on the wiki, with an eye on translation. He has some good ideas, but on the whole it does not play to the strengths of a wiki.

Please let me know your thoughts on what I have said. And if possible suggest better ways of doing this._________________An expert is just a beginner with experience.
Shamelessly representing TdeM!

as nobody seems to have the courage to answer (because of our other discussion, I did wish to contain me in this case ), I will answer...

Your proposal is ugly. the wiki itself is ugly (all Linux wiki's are Dokuwiki, free, or wikimedia, it is wikipedia, wiki's, only the puppy wiki not...). nobody understand the wiki, his structure and other think and it does not see good at all (in graphic performances...)

Our first Puppy wiki did have pages with a left rand to reach easily the topics, I am sorry for you...

as wikipedia wikis have ...

but the pages was written in code!

And the left rand did not follow the structure of THIS forum, but it was not important because the forum AND the wiki did been both new...

5 years later the position is completely different: the forum is 5 years older and gives us a red line! the wiki is as not existent, excuse me but it is true! it is not in the head line of that forum, not on the main page of Puppy and see as a loosed effort to make somewhat without plan!

that what you propose here is

nothing!

Puppy has his own newbie help in each official version directly in the ISO!

I suppose you did not visit it as you probably don't need it. but is strong in English of course!

only Foreign tongues people can not understand it because google translations are not good enough...

a great number of puppy users as I did never learn English and can manage the knowledge of this information's writing and you meet those friends enough on the forum or puppy IRC...

divers puppy users as Mark Ulrich (MU on this forum) are super active young people with best school formation in English, he is student, finish is study and can not contribute as often as in the past today because of his study...

but not all! divers teachers of Germany and France try to use Puppy in her daily work at school and can not because a Thomas is not able to understand simple English (Churchill did understand it... I don't know why?)

but they would very faster understand somewhat in her own mother tongue!

and using a know classification: the same as in that forum being 5 years older as the wiki!

I see where you are coming from. But for that purpose, would it not make more sense to translate puppies internal help?

None of those wikis you name has a navigation sidebar. Wikipedia does not have this. Wikis never have this. Wikis should not follow this structure, but have some main pages with links to the rest.

I never said I like the puppy wiki. I don't. But you have to work with what you've got.

For me the wiki seems like the best way to keep track of all the puppy software, as it can be updated to always be current. But this needs participation from everyone who makes packages. That, for me personally, is the most important thing.

It seems that this is never going to happen for puppy, which is unfortunate.

Always people try to make a website that lists puppy packages, which only they can update. And all these failed attempts are confusing for newcomers who stumble across them.

Anyway this is probably all a bit off topic for the documentation forum.

Colouring headings on the wiki has in my opinion improved it a lot. The homepage still needs work, but cannot be edited.

Any proposed improvements can be tried and illustrated in the Sandbox
The active admins are the only ones (for security against spambots) who can edit the front page http://puppylinux.org/wikka/SandBox

Sadly we had to disable comments (more spam than comments)
and most wiki pages (again sadly due to abuse) can only be edited by registered users.

We did have a beautiful Drupal CMS/Wiki site but the developer quit.
and Raffy and Prithish decided to instigate a new CMS

The look and feel of the wikka site can only be altered by Raffy
- you can PM him with suggestions

For me the wiki seems like the best way to keep track of all the puppy software, as it can be updated to always be current.

Normally at this point I say "no, the only way that has any hope of success is to create a proper repository where anyone can maintain packages". But I guess the other problem is that people use too many different versions of Puppy; there would really need to be adoption of one standard version._________________Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

but I will try to come back to the problem of the pity of the puppy doc for foreign language users, and helpers devoting a great part of her evenings to answer newbies at the sub forums in French, German and probably Spanish, and thomas 106498 did kill my efforts to install a better solution without to show to us a better way

I do not find that wikka wiki would be a good solution. the most frequent wiki used by linuxer's is in my opinion dokuwiki and it seems that it offers an automatic translations following as well as a good organized index...

but perhaps that wikka wiki did learn to do more and better? we use it in this stage since about 5 years or more and a lot of software including puppy linux did make a lot of progresses in those 5 years ...

I'm sorry if I discouraged you from continuing your work, and you are right, I should have provided a better solution when I criticised yours. SO..

I think you are trying to organize it too much. Just translate pages, and at the top of each page have links to other languages. Thats all you need.

Good introductory pages are needed, and these should then also be translated.

Dokuwiki is indeed fantastic. But wikkawikki is ok. It has it's good points (link syntax for example).

My SoftwareIndex page did not prove popular. So I guess I'll delete it, to avoid confusion.

coolpup, who although doing a lot of work, seems to like deleting other peoples stuff. Which is a bit of a downer.

My purpose with this thread was to get people thinking about the wiki. I don't personally have the time right now to do much about it, which is a shame. But Real Life must come first.
-Thomas_________________An expert is just a beginner with experience.
Shamelessly representing TdeM!

I would like to help improve the wiki, here's some thoughts in my head - in response to this discussion and to using the wiki.

1. Wikka - seems simplistic but does the job. I've previously used wikimedia (wikipedia) and sycamore (wikispot). The feature I miss most is not having a 'discussion page'. I've never used docuwiki so I don't know about that. What version wikka is it?

2. Language support is poor. At the moment it seems to consist of sticking 'Fr' on the front of a page.

3. A better style guide could be written and templates for standard pages like Software made.

4. A lot of the pages aren't in a 'wiki' style - They start with the name of the subject linking to an external page. I think it is better to use internal links of provide further subject info - and external links should be descriptive that they are taking you off-site.

5. I like the idea of links from the front page taking you to your suggest subjects 'What it is Puppy and how it works' 'Puppy versions' 'Finding Software' and 'How tos'.

6. Your Software Index works in a similar to Categories. Each Software page should link back to the Software Index. Maybe we could have a 'breadcrumb' thing at the top of pages?

7. In many ways the Wikka acts as an Index to these forums. Maybe you could add a link to the relevant forum in each Software Category?

Please observe that the Puppy Wiki have a really long own tradition (more than 5 years!).

Possible that newbies and purits are feeling well in a wiki with an own old tradition but it is so: The puppy world have his own dynamic. The first puppy wiki did have pages produced in code with a clear and easy user support in the left marge (topics names) as well as the desktop of Puppy has a lot of caracteristic icons and other linux distros are sparing such an help for users!

I find it is not well if newcomers are willing to change the typical puppy choices (Seamonkey, mTpaint, Abiword, xine etc.) and try to force the community to adopt different options the know from other distribution not being puppy at all!

This did happen early with the wiki and since this did happen, the wiki become to be a chaos and it is and stay a chaos!

Yes, I did write this example of front page. It reproduce the situation in the original first Puppy wiki with pages written using code, with a left marge for the orientation and an right part for text.

And it contains a very evolutive binding for all possible languages (but no a control of actualization of the version under different languages, as the Slitaz wiki in Dokuwiki offers now)

All that using MINIMAL code (please see at it in the few examples I did write! the two marges needs only 4 char's !!! See also the powerfull includes for the easy and fast management of information with left time as version number etc. as well as advertising about bugs or to change the language! it is a few tricky for people not being experimented but so power full!!!)

and

only wiki code (not HTML or PHP or else other as in the first Puppy wiki).

New ...

... is only my proposal to follow in the left rand exactly the same topic organization as in this forum so that the user has no new organization to learn, he would immediately where he would find the stuff he is looking for if he is an experimented forum user!

and the more interesting aspect for me (because I spend a lot of time to help newbies in the French and German forum subdivision and I would be ok for me to do it also in French and German in the puppy irc chanel) is that foreign language users as French, German and Spanish people being mainly only in the F, G or S subdivision of the Forum learn to handle with the English subdivision of the forum ignoring because native English speakers making the forum or writing important topics did under estimate «simple difficulties» as the idiomatic expression «cutting edge» (forum subtitle): they would find topics translated in the wiki helping to understand what the matter is in the forum in that subdivision! They would become adult in understanding the forum, and, perhaps, the Puppy philosophy and would not continue to wish to make Puppy the same as Ubuntu (or other) is!

of course, I would prefer to work in a Dokuwiki having fantastic clear organization and able to really manage foreing languages under version control! And having the color module as well as the include module of course!

2. Overall layout. At the moment the only things helping people navigate the wiki are Categories and the Page Index.

3. Style of pages and front page. There is a style guide, but it is basic and not adhered to. Pages have lots of external links scattered about. Many pages are just lists of links, others start giving instructions without context or introduction given to their subject.

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